<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'They made their appointment',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/11/24.jpg" alt="The overpass" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I had feminine breasts.
		I was actually rather happy about it, which surprises me.
		I certainly would like a more feminine figure, but breasts have never been something I&apos;ve wanted.
		They seem ... impractical.
		Having extra weight hanging off my chest seems like it&apos;d be a bother.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		The missionaries actually made their appointment this time.
		I was just telling someone yesterday that if you stand me up three times in a row, I give up on hearing you out, so if they hadn&apos;t shown up today, that would be the end of that.
	</p>
	<p>
		Some of what they&apos;re saying still doesn&apos;t add up.
		Yahweh set up stupid rules, such as that we&apos;d be imperfect and need to suffer for our imperfections.
		Then, Jesus comes along and volunteers to suffer in our place so we don&apos;t have to.
		Yahweh goes along with this idea because he doesn&apos;t actually want us to suffer, even though he&apos;s the one that set up the rule that we&apos;d have to suffer in the first place.
		And then there&apos;s the fall of Adam.
		According to these missionaries, Adam needed to fall or Yahweh&apos;s plan couldn&apos;t be realised.
		He needed Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, which would basically cause them take on the ability to experience life.
		So what does he do?
		He forbids them to eat the fruit, then allows Lucifer to temp them into eating it anyway.
		Then because they&apos;d been commanded not to eat the fruit, their eating of the fruit was a sin and required punishment.
		In other words, the options were that either his plan doesn&apos;t come to fruition or Adam and Eve end up punished for doing what he needed them to do.
		What kind of plan is that!?
		I&apos;m only mortal, and I even I can do better than that plan.
		All he&apos;d have to do is <strong>*not*</strong> command them not to eat the fruit.
		It&apos;s as simple as that.
		The missionaries said it needed to be their choice to eat the fruit, so Yahweh couldn&apos;t command them to eat it, but he could tell them they could eat it if they want to or even just not mention the fruit.
		Commanding them not to do exactly the thing he needs them to do makes no sense if you&apos;re going to punish them for disobeying you.
		That&apos;s not even reverse psychology, that&apos;s just being psychotic.
	</p>
	<p>
		They say that their variant of Christianity doesn&apos;t believe in a hell.
		Instead, they have three heavens, each at varying levels of niceness.
		Even the worst heaven is supposedly better than this hellhole we call &quot;Earth&quot; though.
		It seems too that their version of Yahweh doesn&apos;t intend to destroy people that don&apos;t make some cut.
		This seems much more in line with what a loving god might choose to do than what other variants of Christianity preach.
		For example, the Witnesses believe everyone dies and no longer exists, but then those chosen to be saved will be resurrected and live once more.
		The rest will simply be gone forever.
		They don&apos;t believe in a hell either, but they do believe in oblivion.
		If we&apos;ve got no proof, both oblivion and hell seem like unreasonable punishments for not believing.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries say they want me to pray twice a day for a few years, and that if I don&apos;t, I&apos;ll never get an answer.
		I guess if I&apos;m going to see this experiment through to the end, I&apos;m going to have to do it.
		There&apos;s not going to be an answer either way, I&apos;m almost certain of it, but what kind of scientist would I be if I just wrote this off?
		They say I&apos;ll know when my prayers are answered.
		It&apos;s not going to be any of this vague feeling junk; I&apos;m not going to miss it or write it off as having come from inside.
		If it&apos;s actually discernible like that, I owe it to myself to at least try.
		They say they&apos;ll be back on Wednesday at 10:00.
		This time, they&apos;ve left me with not only a day, but a time.
		That&apos;s much nicer.
	</p>
	<p>
		So after completing some coursework, I prayed, then I prayed again after work before bed.
		Will this lead anywhere?
		Doubtful.
		But again, it&apos;s worth a try.
		They&apos;ve left me with another chapter to read.
		I&apos;ll probably read that tomorrow.
		I&apos;ll almost certainly have some time.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion posts for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Wow.
			Excellent work!
			I double-checked your answer because I couldn&apos;t find an answer myself and thought there was a flaw in the problem.
			You&apos;re completely right though!
			I guess next time, I need to try several more date points instead of relying on two data points to show me the general trend of the data.
			I thought that&apos;d be enough, because I&apos;d already tried using equations and those had come up short.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Thank you for the graphing calculator!
			I&apos;ve bookmarked that now.
			I didn&apos;t think to try a graphing calculator for this, but I&apos;ll know now for next time.
		</p>
		<p>
			From the graph you left me with, I see where I went wrong.
			As you no doubt saw, the lines move further apart at the beginning.
			It&apos;s only later that they curve together and intersect.
			I failed to account for the fact that some exponential lines tend to be mostly flat for an extended period, then turn upward rather suddenly.
		</p>
		<p>
			For the second problem, I&apos;m not sure what you what you mean about my best and worst cases.
			As for the iterations though, you say the inner loop will run <code>n-1</code> times on the last iteration of the inner loop, bet it won&apos;t.
			In the outer loop, we start with a counter <code>i</code> at <code>0</code>.
			We then increment after each loop, and continue the loop if <code>i</code> is <strong>*less than*</strong> <code>n</code>.
			This obviously results in the loop executing <code>n</code> times, just like you said in your answer.
			Within the loop, <code>i</code> will reach a maximum of <code>n-1</code>, right?
			However, the inner loop starts its counter <code>j</code> at <code>0</code> again, but the loop continues as long as <code>j</code> is <code>*less than*</code> <code>i</code>.
			That means <code>j</code> will reach a maximum of <code>i-1</code>, so the loop will be repeated <code>i</code> times.
			If <code>j</code> has a maximum of <code>i-1</code> and <code>i</code> has a maximum of <code>n-1</code>, that means <code>j</code> has a maximum of <code>n-2</code>.
			One iteration for each of the integers from <code>0</code> to <code>n-2</code> results in <code>n-1</code> iterations.
		</p>
		<p>
			I actually thought the answer was O(n<sup>2</sup>) at first too, but then I noticed that the inner loop only increments to the outer loop&apos;s counter (minus one).
			In the first outer iteration, the inner loop won&apos;t be run.
			For the second iteration of the outer loop, the inner loop will get one iteration.
			For the third iteration of the outer loop, the inner loop will get two iterations, and so on.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
